PART 2 - BEGINNINGS

Although there were many possible beginnings, I think the one that stands out began at the Brickies, as the Bricklayers Arms was called by its locals. An old seventeenth century hostelry, walls yellow with the nicotine stains of years, a small bar, a raging fire and the usual polyglot collection of customers. I seem to recall the price of a pint of beer in those pre-decimal days was one and twopence, or a sum close to that. I had recently left the Greenjackets Brigade, 43rd and 52nd Oxford and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry, and was back home after a brief sojourn on the Continent spending my discharge money and hitching from one country to another. Back home I was very much at a loose end with no ideas about work and little to show for a few years soldiering in Malaya and North Borneo. I was still mentally bruised from that and while I know old soldiers talk endlessly about how they won the war, my experience was too close. Spike Milligan said “Join the Army, see the world, meet new and interesting people … and kill them!” While only having a brief tour of those troubled countries I think I knew what Milligan meant and also knew that a military career didn’t really fit into my humanistic philosophy.

The bar counter of the Brickies was quite short, in fact the whole place would have fitted into your average living room. A dartboard on the wall next to a large fire to the left as you entered through a low door, bar counter to the right, walls hung with faded pictures featuring racehorses with impossibly long legs that looked like the ones you find on a carousel with the fore and aft legs off the ground and stretched away form the body. The horses always intrigued me as they looked as though they were flying a few feet above the ground as the galloped or flew or whatever to a petrified finishing post that never came any closer. It was a Tuesday in January. There was a scattering of snow on the ground and a southerly moaned and whined around the buildings dropping the air temperature even further. The snow meant that the fire was even more especially welcoming and I remember standing with my arms behind my back and warming myself while Dave drew the pint. I don’t remember who was there that night. It wasn’t particularly busy and I knew most of the regulars so I guess there must have been a few there who I would have nodded to. What I do remember is the tall and rather lean man leaning on the counter talking in a soft Northern Irish brogue to the publican. I joined in, we were taking a leaf from Betjeman, talking about sports and makes of cars and whatever it is that men talk about to strangers when they meet in one of those small dark places that have seen so many cross its doorstep over the centuries. And we were just another two, drifting through life and enjoying the anonymous comfort of a pint, a pickled egg and a yarn.

Danny, for that was his name, was actually South African but had lived many years in Belfast where his parents had moved to escape apartheid. Later events would show that this was perhaps not the wisest of destinations for those in search of a quiet life. But this was before the Troubles that erupted in the late sixties. The usual question in the early stages of acquaintance-ship is the one about what one did for a living. I explained I was just drifting, looking for opportunities, no real idea of direction or career. Talked expansively about life in a Light Infantry regiment in the tropics and Danny remarked that that explained my un-English tan that was a rarity at the time of year. We talked about Marx; now that I do remember as I knew very little about Marx but nodded intelligently from time to time as Danny explained the rights of the common man a la Marx. Much of it went straight over my head (and still does) but then Danny explained that he was a student nurse at the local mental hospital. That was a conversation stopper. Remember this was the early sixties and the asylums down the road were places that children would scurry past hoping that some phantasmagorical bogey-man wouldn’t jump out at them. Danny laughed and talked at length about the goings on there and the few at the bar hung on every word. It wasn’t often that one had the opportunity to find out first hand what went on behind the grey walls and locked iron gates.

I was intrigued and said so and Danny went on to suggest that if I was at a loose end then maybe I should also work there. As he explained the pay wasn’t brilliant but living in the Nurses Home plus meals was virtually free. Besides, he added, the nurses (I presume he meant the female ones) weren’t that bad. He left and shortly after so did I and several days went by before we remade our acquaintance at the bar. Danny had a leggy girl with him dressed in the height of then fashion – boots, mini skirt and tight jersey. It turned out that she also worked with Danny. She didn’t seem to fit my stereotype of the Asylum nurse wonderfully captured a few years later in the role of Big Nurse in Cuckoo’s Nest. After a few more drinks we were all the very best of friends and they eventually left after a triumphant game of darts when Danny’s girl (I can’t be sure what name was but seem to recall it was Amanda or something close) cleaned us all out with impeccable throws and even one Shanghai. I went home to my cold cottage and thought about what had been said. By morning the idea still intrigued and somewhat to my surprise I recall pushing coins into the telephone box on the green. My enquiries were treated somewhat brusquely by an efficient sounding secretary but I was invited to come in next morning to meet the Superintendent and the Chief Nurse. In retrospect I think that it was the suddenness of the appointment more than anything else that embarked me on my career. Had the appointment not been the next day then I may well have gone off the idea and my life would have taken a different path.

At precisely nine-twenty I stopped my Lambretta scooter at the lodge next to the gates of what a large blue notice proclaimed in formal Roman capitals was ‘LONG GROVE HOSPITAL for the INSANE’. And in smaller letters underneath ‘Established in 1907”. A rather irritated porter who must have been born fully grown with the name of Grapston and none other as even if he had had a first name no-one used it, not even his rather diminutive wife who worked in the laundry. To all he was known simply as Grapston and in due course I discovered how he was the Most Important Person in the hospital – certainly his scheming and dodgy tricks gave him a certain cachet with all who came under the sphere of his influence. Grapston could tell you anything about anyone as his knowledge of hospital gossip was encyclopaedic and sometimes true. Similarly if you wanted some sort of appliance he always knew someone who knew someone who could somehow supply it for less than half the shop price. It didn’t pay to enquire too deeply into the origins of the merchandise but Grapston had his ways and his look of somewhat befuddled innocence would immediately dispel any suspicion and in the end there would be very few people associated with Long Grove who weren’t grateful for his acquisitions.

Now the interesting thing about Long Grove; well one of many interesting things, was that it was one of five similar mental hospitals sitting in a small cluster just to the West of London outside the small town of Epsom. With typical bureaucratic ineptitude or callousness, the catchment area for the five hospitals was forty miles away comprising most of East London and some of Essex. With a similar extension of logic, the hospitals on the East side of London drew their patients from the Western suburbs. Obvious really.

Another interesting thing about Long Grove was that it also housed among its two thousand patients, about 500 Poles who had somehow survived the extremes of the death camps of the European conflict and who, if more than a little mad, were placed in clusters in a few hospitals rather than simply accommodating them in a hospital close to relatives if they had them. I suppose when I think about it, many of them had no relatives being refugees from a war torn continent and so to cluster them like this was possibly the best solution in the circumstances. But to get back to the five hospitals, they went like so. Long Grove’s Northern boundary fence looked across a field into West Park Hospital. Then there was a road and immediately opposite West Park stood the rambling buildings of Horton Hospital. Another road and then The Manor Hospital and over the fence to complete a sort of rough semi-circle, was St Ebba’s Hospital. The five hospitals held between them nearly ten thousand patients and when one considers that the small market town just a few minutes walk away only had a population of eight thousand then the townspeople were significantly outnumbered so to speak. The hospitals also stood on a low hill that looked over the Surrey countryside and their five towers (why do mental hospitals of all institutions always seem to have high water towers?) could be seen for many miles standing gaunt and impressive over the woodlands.

To further complicate matters three of the hospitals, Long Grove, West Park and Horton were built to identical plans; a large ‘D’ shaped corridor with a dozen or so two story ward blocks radiating out from the curve of the ’D’ in a series of zigzags following the curve. The curve of the ’D’ was broken in the middle by the hospital administration building and the Chief Nurse and Medical Superintendent’s offices and forming the connecting straight were ancillary buildings, the hall, some workshops, the staff dining room and a few offices. Although roofed the long corridor was open to the elements. Inside the corridor were gardens and courtyards with the locked courtyards filling the outside areas between the wards. The grounds were a superb collection of specimen trees with a few large two story Villas for voluntary patients tucked away in various parts of the grounds. Additionally there were several other buildings, laundry, boiler house, staff club and swimming pool and various stores. That the hospital has such an arboretum was largely because the first Superintendent of Long Grove, Dr Erasmus Munro, a dour Scot whose dark portrait stared at visitors from pride of place in the gothic entrance hall, purloined most of the young trees that were supposed to landscape all five hospitals when they were built in the late nineteenth century. He simply planted the lot and somehow defended his dubious initiative so that eventually a few straggly specimens turned up for the other hospitals and they never sported the lush woodland of Long Grove from whence perhaps came its name.

The entrance hallway was tall and mostly grey with the dado below the dark brown wood panelling made of yellow and brown tiles. The floor was also tiled in yellow and brown with the armorial bearing of the hospital emblazoned in a sort of mosaic in front of the double doors. The place was cold and bleak, well fitting my imaginations of what an asylum should be. There were silvered grey radiators that clanked and hissed and slowly dripped water on the floor marking the yellow tiles beneath them with meandering rusty brown stains. There were a few uncomfortable looking polished benches along two walls and a small glass window that looked into what passed for a reception area. Large notices hand painted onto polished dark wood boards proclaimed ‘Office of the Medical Superintendent’ and ‘Chief Nurse’ to the left, ‘Wards A to R’ to the right. The hallway was flanked by two smaller doors that led to covered wooden cloisters that curved away on each side. Inside the small window that opened onto ‘Reception’ was a pleasant looking woman who I later came to know as Miss Humble. She presided over a small typing pool and was a ferocious guardian of the current Medical Superintendent, Dr Massey-Beresford. After establishing that I indeed had an appointment with the illustrious man I was escorted to a rickety wooden chair placed alongside another brown door not immediately obvious when I entered and I was told somewhat brusquely to wait until the ‘Enter’ light showed next to the door. I felt somewhat like a very junior subaltern waiting outside of the CO’s office and waited somewhat nervously. Nervousness not only of the occasion and the imminence of my interview with the exalted Dr Massey-Beresford, but also arising from the circumstances of where I seemed somewhat unexpectedly to have found myself.

The interview I remember clearly as it was over in less that two minutes and was conducted by the esteemed doctor and the tall gangling figure of the Chief Nurse, Allan Abbot or ‘AA’ as I came to know him. The doctor asked only two questions, one was about the Regiment and what service had I seen and the other was to enquire if I was related to the composer of the same name. I answered briefly about my military experiences and agreed that indeed the composer was my great grandfather. AA simply wanted to know where I went to school. I must have satisfied him as in a great voice he called for Miss Humble who entered so quickly she must have been waiting outside the door. She was told to give me an application form to fill in and to find me a uniform. I was told to come back on the next Monday and report for duty on ward H1 or Harvey One. I’m not exactly sure what sequence of events followed. I can remember a walk down a long corridor to a large storeroom not at all unlike the Quartermaster’s Store from my regimental past and being given a bundle of dark blue serge trousers and several white jackets that buttoned down the left breast with detachable black buttons and looking rather like a cavalry mess jacket. I was handed two detachable red epaulettes and was also given a broad leather belt and an enormous key all of five inches long (that I still have) with the words CHUBB on one side of the loop and MALE on the other. The flange of the key was remarkably simple and little more than a square of steel. The whole thing polished with use and I was assured it had been issued when the hospital opened in the late nineteenth century. Whether this was true or not didn’t seem to matter – certainly the thing had the patina of ages on it and the whole hefted into my palm in an uncomfortably familiar manner. It was also made clear to me that I lost the key at my peril and would have to pay thirty shillings (nearly a week’s pay) for a new one. That I pay attention to the key is somewhat important as in many ways it was a symbol of the times and in one way or another followed my career from hospital to hospital. The locks into which it fitted so smoothly were recessed with a hollow brass cup that ensured the key slid easily into the slot. I was told to buy myself some black boots (not shoes, but boots) and report for my first duty as a ‘student nurse’ suitably attired with my trousers properly pressed and my white jacket clean and tidy. I was also told that I was to wear the jacket for no longer than a single shift and to deposit it into the hospital laundry on a regular basis where it would be properly washed and starched and delivered back to my room.

The next step in my induction was to be escorted by a friendly orderly of about my own age to the Male Wing of the Nurses Home. I was given another key (that I also still have) with Male 26 stamped on it. This was a fairly conventional key similar to the one we all use for our front door and opened the sixth door on the right of the second floor of the Nurses Home. My room where I lived for the next few years was a small cell comprising a single bed with a lumpy mattress, a built in wardrobe and small desk with a hand-basin under the window. On the inside of the door was a long list of Rules headed by Rule Number One. NO VISITORS AFTER 9.00PM. The other rules about when to hand in the dirty and where to receive the clean bed linen, where to assemble if there was a fire and so on were all in lower case so it was apparent that concern for our tender morals was perhaps uppermost in the minds of the establishment. The orderly who showed me the room said I wasn’t supposed to move in until I actually started work but anyway no-one would particularly care so really I could do what I liked. I decided I would wait until the following week, was told it was my choice and I was left to my own devices. I did what we all do in a strange room – sat on the bed and tested it for bounce, turned the single tap on the basin on and off and felt the temperature of the radiator at the foot of the bed and found it heated by the fires of hell being so hot to my touch. The window sash opened about six inches before being obstructed by a block of wood screwed into the runner but it looked out onto a densely wooded and surprisingly attractive view through which I could see the grey mansard roof of the administration wing in the distance.

I left most of the new uniform clothes hanging in the small wardrobe and headed back to my rental where I packed my things and wondered just what the hell I’d let myself in for. That evening it was back to the Brickies and a thoughtful pint or three after which it didn’t seem to matter and I even began to look forward to my new career direction. As a student nurse I was required (according to the pamphlet I had been given) to work on the wards for some weeks before attending the school of nursing for two weeks induction training or ‘Prelim’. Thereafter it was a further cycle of six weeks on the wards with varying periods of one or two weeks in the school for the first year at the end of which would be exams that would determine whether we stayed on for the second and subsequent years. Nowadays of course nursing training has become highly academic with more time in the classroom and much less on the wards. This may well suit the technicians we are training at the beginning of the Twenty-first Century but I still feel that hospital based training gave a better understanding of institutional culture, a much deeper grounding in basic nursing care and a far more in-depth knowledge of madness in its many forms. At this early stage of my long career in health I had somewhat mixed feelings, being on the one hand excited at the opportunity opening up for me and on the other more than a little puzzled about why I was taking this course.

In many was I was something of a loner and although I made friends easily I was also a person content with my own company. The psycho-analysts will point to a fractured childhood and my being sent to boarding school at the tender age of nine following the break-up of my parent’s marriage and my father’s rather inglorious bankruptcy. That I stayed at school at all was somehow due to the largesse of my father’s Lodge that had a fund for indigent and embarrassed Freemasons. I knew little of this at the time and so suffered the torment of a minor English public school that seemed to have changed little from the Dotheboys Hall of Charles Dickens. At the age of twelve however I suddenly grew a head taller than the older boys who preyed on the junior school and after a few successful bouts in and out of the ring, with and without Queensbury, was treated with a certain degree of circumspection and respect. School was very much a crammer for Oxford or ‘The Regiment’ and turned out academics or fine officers. I was more of an adventurer and so a career in the military sounded more interesting than the dusty halls of academe and on completing the equivalent of my University Entrance joined the county regiment at eighteen. Being somewhat of a masochist and impressed by the many paintings that hang throughout the school of staunch and upright military gentlemen engaged in magnificent battles against various infidel horde and partly I think to mark my own determination not to follow the establishment line I joined as a Rifleman (the Greenjacket equivalent of private) rather than an officer cadet, completing my basic training in the ranks at the Regimental Depot in Winchester. Then after further training at the School of Infantry off to the Far East as a young Platoon Commander of a polyglot group of soldiers some of whom were regulars and some of whom were ‘Nashers’ as National Servicemen were called. My sergeant, Sergeant Fox, had landed at Normandy in 1944 so I quickly learned the secret of the British Army’s success which is to leave everything to the sergeants as they actually know far more about what should be done that a youth of nineteen irrespective of the number of pips on his shoulder. After boarding school and the military, institutional life had few fears for me. The room in the nurses’ home was very similar to many rooms in many Messes I had stayed in and to some extent it was very familiar territory. That I was about to be rudely introduced to some two thousand lunatics was simply another challenge that while outside my sphere of knowledge surely couldn’t be that difficult to manage.

I was wrong of course but the journey was set.